Great One
by Sophie-Lou
Summary: The Doctor returns to Messaline to find that Jenny is still remembered by the people there.


_The Doctor returns to Messaline to discover that Jenny is still remembered there._

* * *

The Doctor couldn't resist going back. Just to see it one more time. It had been a several years. He was on his own again and it gave him time to think of the many chances he had lost. He could never forget her. After years of thought, the Doctor realise just how much she meant to him. Often she was the first person he thought of when he woke up, the last thing he thought of when he went to sleep, and sometimes he had nightmares about her death. He imagined that he could save her. He pretended, just for a moment, that he had pushed her out of the path of that bullet.

_My poor little girl_, he thought in a guilty mind.

When she died he had failed once again as a father. He had swiftly come to love her like his other children, the children from the past, his "natural children" who had a mother. At least until he lost her too. Death took them all. Time Lord carelessness, and the Daleks, and the Time War saw them all off in the end. His son. His daughter. His brother. His wife.

Even his granddaughter, his dear little Susan, died when the Daleks took the Citadel at the very end of the Time War. She had been sent there by the president Romana to try and decipher Dalek codes; she had been a genius for that sort of thing. However the DalekEmperor found out what she was doing and sent in the soldiers. In a last attempt to save the other Time Lords fighting there, she threw herself into core of the main computer, disabling the computers and allowing the Time Lords time to regroup. Just before the end the Doctor found her body, both her hearts burned up. There was no hope of regeneration. She was nothing but a hollow shell. The Doctor had to believe that was the last time he ever felt truly paternal. It was also the moment he stopped caring whether Gallifrey lived or not. The Daleks had to be destroyed.

All of them he loved. And Jenny he loved too, regardless of the fact she emerged from a machine. She was his flesh and blood. She was his daughter.

While it had been two or three years for him it had been a hundred or so years for Messaline. He landed the TARDIS in the same tunnel he had first arrived. It took a moment to step outside. He was afraid of what he would find. Would it even be the tunnel anymore? He didn't know.

One thing he did know was this—when he went outside he would ask someone to tell him where Jenny's resting place was. He just wanted to see it. He wanted to be near where her ashes lay. That had been the compromise that Cline had agreed to. The Doctor would allow them to give Jenny a proper ceremony, for her to lie in state for two or three days to mark the beginning of a new world. In return for that Jenny was to be given the funeral rites of a Time Lord.

"Clean her hands, arms, face and hair," he had explained to Cline some hundred years ago. "Her body must be cremated. Wrap her in white sheets of cloth and cremate her in an open field, with the grass and the trees." It had not been the red grass and silver trees of Gallifrey but the greenness of Messaline would do.

"She won't be forgotten, Doctor," said Cline. "I'll make sure of it."

On Messaline where myths could be made in a week, the Doctor believed him. Yet so much could be forgotten in one hundred years. He hoped there was some record of her final resting place so he could find it.

Stepping outside he found that it was still a tunnel. He was straight away spotted by a human and a hath. They stood gawping at him. The human's mouth was wide open and hath was bubbling excitedly. The Doctor looked at all of them and spoke frankly. He decided not to tell them who he was. If Cline had kept his promise then it would just confuse them.

"I'm a traveller. I'm here to visit the resting place of someone who died here many years ago. Her name was Jenny, her father was a man called the Doctor."

The human came forward and looked at him, "Did you say _the Doctor_?"

The Doctor looked at the surprised human and nodded, "Yes."

The human excitedly murmured something to the hath and the hath bubbled something eagerly back. Some of them clasped the shoulders of their fellow humans and clasp their fists excitedly. The Doctor didn't understand. "I'm sorry but do you know who I—I mean—_he_ is?"

"Of course we do!" cried the human. "It was foretold in the writings of Human Cline and Hath Gable. Everyone knows who the Doctor is. He is the God of Time, Light and the Sun. He is the father of the _Great One_."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. The God of Time, was it now? He remembered the legend of the Great One, too. It appeared that for all Cline's promises the people of Messaline had once again confused their history.

Still, he decided to let them elaborate further by prompting them, "Tell me, because I'm a bit lost having been off this planet for so many years, what exactly is the legend behind the Doctor and the Great One."

The human spoke as if he were preacher about to give a sermon. "The Doctor was a wandering god in time and space, travelling all around the universe without anything. In his sorrow he came here to Messaline where the Ancients lived in conflict and war."

That part was right, the Doctor thought.

"Legend says that the Doctor was cut by the blade of war. From that scar sprung _Her_."

It was a slightly more romanticised version of events than sticking his hand in a "breeding machine", but more or less true. Yet it was the "Her" this that caught his attention. "Her?"

"Yes, Her" said the human. "Everyone knows of Her. Everyone knows of She on Messaline. She was the Great One, the Goddess of Life … I assume you at least know of that!"

The Doctor didn't know what to think. Jenny had been remembered in the best way possible. The Great One, who had originally breathed life into the universe in their little creation myth about the Source, had become Jenny. She was the Goddess of Life. It was an ironic given the way she died. The Doctor couldn't swallow the lump in her throat.

"What do you know about Jen—the Goddess of Life, then?"

"She was a goddess unlike any other with abilities beyond that of any human or hath," replied the human. "They say that she and her father breathed life into this planet. However one of the humans of the time Human Cobb tried to kill the Great One. She was shot and died. The God of Time was so devastated that he returned to the stars to continue his lonely wandering through space…"

The Doctor stepped forward, "I assume that the Great One has a resting place here somewhere since she is remembered by you."

The human looked at the Doctor as if he was stupid. He laughed and shook his head, "Of course not! That is the most _important_ part of the legend. Don't tell me you don't know what that is too--"

"Know _what_?" the Doctor said, wondering what the human was going on about. "Are you saying you don't know where she was buried?"

"She never was buried!" cried the human, with the Hath a nod.

"She wasn't?" the Doctor said, starting to worry that no one knew now. "What happened to her ashes?"

"She never died, sir. Don't you know that part of the legend?"

The Doctor's hearts panged inside his chest. "What do you mean she never died?"

"She rose from the death, sir!" said the human. "Don't you get it? You really don't know the story? On the third day after her death they say that she took a breath and sighed life from her mouth. It rose up into the sky. Then her eyes opened and she lived."

There was a chance that the history had been distorted but there was always a chance it wasn't. If Jenny had no burial place then who was to say it wasn't true? A pair of sorrowful hearts turned into hopeful hearts. Maybe she did live, and maybe she was still alive _now_…

"Where does all this come from?"

"I told you," said the human, "it came from the writings of Human Cline and Hath Gable. They were the ones who wrote the history; the seven day war between Hath and Human, the life giving Source, the Doctor and the Great One. It's not some little myth I'll have you know, sir. This is _real_!"

"Oh, I know it's real…" the Doctor whispered, he was unable to contain a smile. "So, you're telling me that this light came from Jen—I mean—the Great One's mouth?"

"Yes" said the human.

"She breathed out a yellowish light?"

"Yes."

"And then she lived?"

"Yes!"

The Doctor stood there for a moment. He was trying to fit it all together. It was then it finally hit him. He slapped his head and grinned widely, "Of course, _of course_, I get it!"

The human lent over to his hath companion and whispered, "Thank the Doctor for that!"

"Pre-rejuvenating, why didn't I think of that?" the Doctor said loudly, excitedly, as if all his troubles had faded away in a fraction of a second. The human and the Hath looked at each other before looking at the Doctor. He decided to explain, as he always did, despite the fact it was meaningless to them. "Temporarily shutting down her body to recover rather than regenerating, that would explain why she didn't regenerate. I mean shutting the body down is dangerous so we don't do it much any more so it's not wonder I didn't consider it. You see Time Lords…"

"Time Lords?" the human asked.

"Yes, we have this thing where we rise from the dead and live. Most of the time we change our faces but if we are within the first ten hours of one life-time we can recover!" he jabbered out. "Don't you see Jenny was only ten hours old when she died. She was newborn in Time Lord terms so when she was shot she automatically recovered!"

"Excuse me" said the human. "What are you talking about?"

"Never mind that I've got things to do," the Doctor replied. "I have to find her because she's out there some where. If what you say is true then she is defiantly is out there some where. Tell me, did she ever say where she was going in the… legend."

"The Great One said that she was going to travel the universe to rescue civilisations," the human said, looking above him. "We wait for the day when the God of Time and the Goddess of Life return to bless us with knowledge once again."

The Doctor turned around and ran back to the TARDIS. The human and the hath watched him run into his mysterious blue box. It was a very curious thing. They thought it must be cramped travelling around time and space in that old thing. He turned around, "Thank you for telling me this. When I've found what I'm looking for, I'll be back to thank you properly."

"You do that" the human replied politely. "Bye."

The human and the Hath waved dumbly as the Doctor disappeared into the blue box and it began to dematerialise. Again, the two of them looked at least other, shook their heads and began to walk back to the city.

"What was that about?" the human said.

The hath bubbled something in response.

"I know he was a bit crazy."

Again the hath bubbled something.

"Yeah, he did say he was relative of the Doctor, didn't he?"

The hath didn't say anything for a moment. It then bubbled again.

The human chuckled in response, "You think that man was the Doctor?"

The hath nodded.

"Might be," the human admitted. "But if it is… I always imagined the blue temple to be… _bigger_, that's all."

* * *


End file.
